Scene: At a family dinner with extended relatives. Foucault (F) and Deleuze (D) are a gay couple and the parents of two adopted children, Fanon (Fan) and Spivak (S). Spivak is Foucault’s daughter from a previous relationship, and she has kept this knowledge from him.

Foucault and Deleuze are proprietors of this unconventional family, one that breaks down notions of family, couples, and children. They are attempting to reach a BwO. They are unaware of their self-privileging and obvious contradiction of the subject/power dynamic.

Fanon, as the Black Adopted Son, is “the Colonized,” who are represented only in terms of the Western world. The inferiority complex of the colonized that Fanon writes about is reflected in the character’s actions and muffled speech (critique on language).

Spivak in the role of the adopted daughter is the subaltern who cannot speak (or isn’t heard). Epistemic violence manifests itself physically in her actions, and in her character’s knowledge of her relation to Foucault.

Everyone sits at one long table. Foucault and Deleuze sit at the center, Fanon and Spivak are at either ends (representing the “center” and the marginalized).

The conversation:

F – Deleuze, I feel that we have embraced ourselves and our role as intellectuals in expressing our sexuality and by having two adopted children whom we have seamlessly woven into our family fabric.

D – Indeed, we have used our intellectualism and our bodies to obliterate subjectifications. Perhaps the workers’ struggle is beginning to wane. Don’t you agree, kids?

Fanon considers this, and while chewing on his last bite, takes another big bite of a biscuit. As he speaks, his voice is muffled and food is flying out of his mouth

Fan – I don’t believe that the familial process has been smooth at all. Now, I am the adopted Black son of two gay men. Your adoption of me, as a child and sans my consent I might add, has made me into what you see me as; no longer am I what I was. My self-identity is definite but not what you define me as. I may be sitting and speaking at the same table with you, but your conversation is different from mine. The ease with which you’ve identified yourself as gay, parent, and intellectual, masks me as adopted, son, and other. The subject has been reinforced.

Spivak becomes visibly frustrated and angry. She speaks in a loud, violent and aggressive tone.

S – It is just as Fanon says! Your perceived notion that the role of intellectuals is no longer to create Knowledge is inadequate. You say there is no place for representation, speaking for someone, or representation, re-presenting someone, but that is exactly what you are doing! Do you understand? Your discussions have taken us, the marginalized, and kept us there! Even at this very table!

She violently stabs a piece of chicken with a fork.

Spivak – I need to tell you something, for a long time now. Foucault, I am your biological daughter.

Foucault and Deleuze stand up together. From the perspective of the audience, they look much larger than Fanon and Spivak.

F – Fanon, you don’t speak with your mouth full. And Spivak, go to the other room!

S exits, Deleuze addresses the rest of the relatives at dinner.

D – I apologize for her behavior. Her friend committed suicide. It was horrible for her and she’s been going through some tough times.

So he asks, “how do you make yourself a body without organs.” A body without organs is the pre-individual. An individual has attributes and characteristics, organs and senses, desires, etc. The pre-individual has none of these. “The BwO is what remains when you take everything away. What you take away is precisely the phantasy, and signifiances and subjectifications as a whole” p. 151. This is a different school of thought, because previously people would try to understand our realities and the reasons behind our social interactions by devising unreal things, ie. ideology, culture, practice (we discussed this in class).

The body without organs is a desire, something we strive to but cannot fully achieve (a limit or asymptote). A body without organs is removed of all attributes, and these attributes are really just a pool of intensities. “There is a continuum of all of the attributes or genuses of intensity under a single substance, and a continuum of intensities of a certain genus under a single type or attribute. A continuum of all substances in intensity and of all intensities in substance” P 154.

The body without organs “as an abstract machine” differentiates the substance because of desire, but by what measure or judgment? “the plane of consistency” (p165).

I think the summation at the end of the chapter is as concise as it gets, “All we are saying is that the identity of effects, the continuity of genera, the totality of all BwO’s, can be…”

I guess I’m so heavily indoctrinated with illustrations of “ideology”, “socialization”, and “culture”, that I can’t really wrap my head around this pre-individual pool of matter theory.